Oh, what a lovely war, darlings

The socialite Cecil Beaton was best known for his portraits of film stars. Now his lost wartime photographs are about to surface in a new exhibition

Cecil Beaton, famous for his society photographs and theatrical designs, was
an unlikely choice as a war photographer. In December 1939, he produced a
spoof autobiography, My Royal Past, a wickedly camp satire full of double
entendres. In short, he was hardly cut out to be the Don McCullin of his
generation. But Beaton was determined to do his bit for the war effort,
beginning as a telephonist for air-raid warnings at Wilton.

Perhaps typically for the well-connected Beaton, it was Queen Elizabeth, the
Queen’s mother, who persuaded him to use his camera for propaganda work,
after some of his pictures of evacuated children were published. He began
with portraits of war leaders — generals and politicians — but then sailed
to America during the fall of France to make some money taking photographs
for Pond’s face cream. After some agonising over a sense of wartime duty, he
returned to London to